Information on a subject (e.g., a person, a product, or a company), particularly marketing information, is extremely important to business, social, or personal interactions. One can generally separate such information into two categories. The first is information about an individual and this is provided by exchanging business cards containing basic contact information (e.g., a person's name, title, and contact information). This practice has been adopted into business and social practices over many generations and across different cultures. The other form of information is information about a company or a product. This information is usually printed on marketing materials such as brochures, CDs, and catalogs. Both forms of information exchange are limited by the following constraints.
First, each printed material (a business card, a catalog) is a consumable give-away item and therefore, does not provide the provider of the material with a mechanism to capture the recipient's information after each interaction. This means that the material might be misplaced, lost, or discarded and neither the provider nor recipient has an effective way of recovering the information lost. If a provider wishes to follow-up with the recipient, he is only able to do so if information on the recipient is available. Conversely, the recipient has no mechanism to obtain any of the information obtained from the provider if the material has been misplaced, lost, or discarded.
Second, information provided printed on materials is fixed after an exchange and thus cannot be altered after the material has been provided to the recipient. This means that the information printed cannot be updated to reflect any changes. Further, if information is printed incorrectly or changed after the information has been printed, then the materials need to be printed again with the new information. There is no current solution to update the information once the materials have been received. For example, information on business cards received by others will not reflect the change of information when an individual moves to a new company. Another example is inability of product catalogs to accurately reflect the availability of products and new unlisted products.
Third, the number of materials that can be provided to a recipient is limited by the physical availability of such material. This means that each provider can only distribute as many materials as he or she has available at one time. As a result, both the recipient and the provider are burdened with the need to carry a stack of his or her own materials and a stack of materials received from others.
Fourth, the type of information or the extensiveness of the information cannot be customized for each recipient. Therefore, the type of information provided and the level of detail for each material is the same for all recipients unless the provider wishes to carry different stacks of materials comprising different information that target different groups of recipients.
Fifth, the extent of information provided to each recipient is limited by what has been printed on each material. The material itself has a limited space or area printing of information.
Finally, business cards and marketing materials are consumables that burden the provider with the cost and time in generating these materials but become virtually useless to the recipient once the information is stored digitally or is no longer relevant.
There remains a need for a cost-effective and environmentally friendly solution that enables a convenient way to send and receive data between similar devices that provides the following advantages: 1) a mechanism for a user to reach the other user whom he exchanged information with even if he lost or misplaced the device 2) a method for a user to effectively update the information after it has been provided to a recipient in the initial interaction 3) not limited by the physical availability of printed materials and not burdened with the need to carry such materials 4) flexibility in type of data exchanged and extensiveness of data exchange 5) ability to customize information provided to a recipient subsequent to the exchange of data.
Currently USB devices, such as mass storage devices, are used for storing and transferring data. Besides story and transferring data, USB devices have been modified to serve various functions. Some exhibitors at meetings and conferences are handing out mass storage devices as marketing materials. Because USB devices are widely used, it is therefore preferable to adapt a USB device and variations thereof to meet some the needs described above.